PCI DSS. If your company deals with credit cards and you don’t know what those letters stand for, you should. While the public relations nightmares, response costs and expensive class action defense fees associated with major data breaches garner most of the headlines in the mainstream media, many companies that are victims of data breaches also face significant compliance costs, penalties and fines as a result of contractual relationships with credit card companies, credit card processors and banks. These all stem from a company’s failure to comply with PCI DSS.

So what is PCI DSS? It’s the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which is the proprietary information security standard for organizations that handle branded credit cards from the major card brands, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. PCI DSS compliance is an ongoing process and is far too complicated to discuss in detail here. For an overview of PCI DSS and the complete requirements, you can go here. But for our purposes, we will just focus on the risks of not complying.
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